Oh boy, oh boy. I adore the cheese and onion bakes from What’s Cooking? And found the sausage rolls to be okay. But these chicken and vegetable pies have left me in a small rage.

The first time I cooked one I thought maybe it was a bit of user error. Had I somehow misread the box instructions? I double-checked and no, I did the time recommended, the heat suggested and more crucially kept it in the tin tray.

But before we get to that let us talk about the size of these pies. They look fairly small, but perhaps it is because they are taller, still it gave me fears about pastry to filling ratio when I held one in my hand and pondered how light it felt. The height of one of these pies was less than the length of my (shorter) index finger.

I will say given this initial impression I was surprised by the amount of filling in there. Or at least the amount of chicken in there with a good ten noticeable chunks of chicken. I think there were maybe only two or three peas and not much more carrot in there as well so calling this a chicken and vegetable pie is a bit of a stretch.

But here is the bit that really irked me. I cooked it, it looked good, I was feeling positive. I went to take it out the case and the pie lid came in my hand and the rest remained. The next time I tried slowly turning it upside down and it just collapsed everywhere instead.

it was well cooked. It isn’t that the pastry was on the anaemic side and hadn’t had chance to harden up for added structural integrity. The dry crumbly pastry would have probably only got worse for structure had it been cooked longer. So I put the lid back on and just popped it on the plate still in tray and that made eating it and having to try scoop the pastry out at the end an even more unsatisfying nightmare.

And it was not a good pie. Structure aside. It having chicken in it is the nearest I can get to a compliment. It needed seasoning in there. Something for flavour. The sauce was lifeless. The vegetables lacking. And of course the chicken was reformed so lacked flavour too. I don’t know if I have ever had a more bland chicken pie in all my 30 years on this earth.

It pains me because I desperately want to celebrate cheap alternatives, quick meals on lazy days and having that emergency supply in the freezer but these cannot be celebrated in the slightest. If you are shopping in Lidl get some from the fresh section or hunt out a slightly more expensive frozen one because with these you really get what you pay for.